Brass Baja

Description

Most Indians are familiar with the sights and sounds of a wedding procession led by musicians clad in brightly coloured uniforms. With their sounds and physical selves, these bandsmen lend prestige to the procession and help control the public spaces through which so many Indian families have moved. Fulfilling a specific cultural and historical demand for processional music, bandsmen and their music are symbolic of the association between musical and cultural change in South Asia. Brass Baja examines the reality of the low musical and social status ascribed to Indian bandsmen, as well as changes in musical repertoire and instrumentation. Rich in symbolic and factual detail, it focuses on the ways in which Indian processional music has changed over time and on the socio-economic gulf between bandsmen and their patrons.

About the Author

Gregory D. Booth is an associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is an expert on the music cultures of India, where he regularly conducts ethnographic and historical research.

Reviews

‘It is far more than just a book on the brass bands which lead wedding processions in most parts of the subcontinent but an intensive study of the men who make up the bands, their status in social, cultural and economic hierarchies and also provides readers a panoramic view of the culture of wedding celebrations in south Asia.’
—Saeed Malik, Economic and Political Weekly

‘In researching this milieu [Booth] has traversed the length and breadth of North India and the Deccan, from Kolkata to Katch. Accordingly, his study is rigorously scholarly and artfully written as well.’
—Peter Manuel, Ethnomusicology

Table of contents

Introduction

PART ONE: CONTEMPORARY AND HISTORICAL ETHNOGRAPHIES OF A PROCESSIONAL MUSIC TRADE

1. Identity, Caste, and Family
2. Māliks and Bandsmen—Social and Professional Hierarchies
3. Careers, Space, Location, and Movement

PART TWO: SOUNDS, SIGHTS, PRACTICE, AND PERFORMANCE

4. Ensembles and Fashion—The Flow and Change of Meaning
5. The Practice of Processions and Processional Music
6. The Wedding Band Repertoire
7. Practices of Transmission and Performance

Conclusion
Appendix—Musical Transcriptions
References
Index
About the Author